


The Dying of the Light

by Trialia



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 02:45:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trialia/pseuds/Trialia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has their ghosts. Yours are just a bit more frakked up than most...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dying of the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: Asto (theastolat); spoilers through 'Scar'. Written for shinyfab in bsgficexchange. Rated for language &amp; adult content. Title borrowed from the late Dylan Thomas. Possible trigger warning for domestic violence/familial abuse required here.

"Nothing but bad news," she'd said, again and again. "That's all you ever bring with you. Nothing good ever came of anything you ever gave me. Just like your frakking father, a worthless frak-up."

(It's true what they say, that if you hear something enough you start to believe it. You know it's not true what she says about your father, though. No one who could make music that caught at your heart like his could have been all bad, even if he died and left you with her.)

No matter what you tried, however much you argued, cajoled, even cried, you never could do anything to change her mind.

Not even that last day, when you came home to tell her you'd made it into flight school, the day you found the letter from the hospital and knew she'd given up on life, heard her say as much, and gave up on her.

(You hadn't cried since you were a kid 'til that frakking awful day, when you went out and got stinking drunk and came home with some girl from some bar. You didn't recognise her the next morning and never saw her again until after the attack on the Colonies, and you're really glad now Kat had been so stoned she didn't remember _you_ at all.)

That was the last time you ever saw your mother.

You never could take back what you said to her then, so you try not to remember it.

(Rat bastard Leoben for parroting those forgotten words back at you eight years later. You killed him over and over but you never could get him out of your life, or out of your head.)

Try not to think that she's the first person you let down by being born at all. You always knew she never wanted you: she made that as clear as she could.

You wondered plenty of times why she kept you at all, after all the shit she did to you.

"It's just something she put in your head," he says, and you want him dead for it because you know he's telling the truth and you don't want to know how he knows. You kill him again and again and again and it's still not enough. It's never enough.

She always said your dad had an addictive personality (disbelieving, you slam the door in your head like you can't in your life anymore, can't close that door now he's opened it again) and you took after him for that. At the end of the world you've almost begun to believe it: ambrosia, cigars, sex. You run out of one and move on to a substitute.

Helo (not a good idea - hung up on Sharon). Gaius Baltar (another substitute you don't want to think about). Chuckles (nugget who bought it, one less bad frak to deal with). Kat (never happened, "you're just a reckless drunk", remember?). Sam Anders (now who's hung up on a dead man?).

'Course that just means you're an addict - not that he was. Does it matter?

Lee gets on your case for it, like he's been doing ever since the funeral - Zak's, gods know there've been so many since then they've damn near all blurred into each other, all but a few, but you still think of that one as The Funeral, like it's got capital letters or something.

"You're fine with the dead guys, it's the living ones you can't deal with."

You're not even gonna think he's right (he just might be, the one missing name in your list).

You can't sleep, don't want to lie in your rack staring at your own eyelids and the hell of the inside of your head.

Time to go out and kill as many frakking Cylons as you can.

(Maybe then, you'll stop thinking of Leoben as a 'him'.)

Maybe that'll kill the ghosts for you.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Aurora (The Space Between Life And Death Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/39221) by [akamine_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamine_chan/pseuds/akamine_chan)




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